The Red Badge of Courage: A Norton Critical Edition

This Norton Critical Edition of Stephen Crane’s classic 1895 Civil War novel is again based on the first published edition, conservatively edited.

The Fourth Edition offers a broadened and restructured “Backgrounds and Sources” section that illuminates the social and intellectual climate of the 1890s and includes thought-provoking material by Jay Martin, Charles J. LaRocca, and Perry Lentz on Crane’s use of the Battle of Chancellorsville. “Criticism” includes an expanded introduction by Donald Pizer covering major critical approaches to the novel and fourteen assessments that reflect the revival critical interest in The Red Badge of Courage by, among others, R. W. Stallman, Charles C. Walcutt, John Fraser, Amy Kaplan, John E. Curran Jr., James B. Colvert, and Donald Pizer. 1 map; 3 photographs

Stephen Crane was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

Eric Carl Link is the author of The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century and Neutral Ground: New Traditionalism and the American Romance Controversy.

Donald Pizer was Pierce Butler Professor of English Emeritus at Tulane University. He was the author of The Novels of Theodore Dreiser, Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism, and The Novels of Frank Norris, among others.